The morning after the election I rode my daily Metro-North to New York City and listened to the Anna Karenina soundtrack. I was drawn to its purposeful movement and conspiratorial urgency, noting the irony of its Russian subject matter. I watched the fall landscape pass through the glass reflection with more poignancy than usual.
The reality of Trump’s victory was a car crash of international proportions; I could not keep from looking away and reading more about it. There was a map of Millennial voters, countdowns to the 2018 mid-terms and thought-pieces upon thought-pieces, one even declaring it was good for Democrats in the long run. The term “Resistance” was formed. On Twitter, the accounts I followed were pledging to work harder, be better and get engaged at whatever level they could. It was all a heart-warming circle-jerk.
I wasn’t immune from Twitter’s rare burst of sentiment and didacticism. I wrote a couple drafts.
After talking to some friends and fellow artists, I can say that many of us had the same reaction. Everything is more serious than before. For a generation who had mainly spent its maturing years under the stability of Obama, the Trump reality was our first real disillusionment. Progress was abruptly halted, and Trump was hell-bent on putting the thing in reverse.
The idea of progress was thoroughly fucked. Now my generation had to deal with overt racism, science deniers with a platform, and corporate cronies living among us. We really thought we were going to be the ones to hurdle the fuckery of those who came before us, and change the world.
My daughter was born the day after. I was hoping to welcome her into an America with a qualified woman president, not a self-professed pussy grabber. Whenever I think about this, it’s always with the Arcade Fire lyrics from Suburbs: “So can you understand/ Why I want a daughter while I’m still young/ I want to hold her hand/ and show her some beauty/ before all the damage is done/ But if it’s too much to ask, if it’s too much to ask/ Then send me a son.”
With the swells of Dario Marianelli’s soundtrack urging me onward, I, too, made a private pact to devote myself wholeheartedly to more meaningful pursuits. I’m just an aspiring novelist, what can I do in these political times? I devised to turn the series of loosely-related short stories I had just finished the week before into a fully-fledged, very ambitious, probably naïve attempt at the great American novel.
The subtle connection between certain characters’ mindsets and populist movement, I decided, would become a major, if not main force. The thought was there would be skits that put the novel’s characters into a broader context, similar to the one-off chapters in John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath, between the focus on the Joad family. I outlined a scene where, as a physical manifestation of his misdirection, Trump uses a magician showmanship in his nightly seduction of Melania, who speaks only in quotes from Michelle Obama. Another scene features Putin vlogging instructions to operatives for their misinformation campaigns.
I wasn’t alone in this impulse to focus on political matters in art because of Trump. Even leading up to the election, artists attempted to satirize, condemn, or humiliate Trump. The image that jumps out me to the most is the naked wax figure, derisively depicting a corpulent stomach and micropenis.
Since the election, I’ve seen an emergence of American fiction. There’s been a proliferation of pieces focusing on politics, and borrows its characters from the prominent figures of the White House first family and administration — which, today, is virtually synonymous.
I am a proponent of making literature prescient and relevant to its time, but the question should be asked, “What do these pieces accomplish?”
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